4 ms·

IAC's market cap is about $8B. Yahoo's cap is 6x that at $48B. It's hard to imagine Yahoo just transforming itself into the same kind of company as IAC, only 6

IAC's market cap is about $8B. Yahoo's cap is 6x that at $48B. It's hard to imagine Yahoo just transforming itself into the same kind of company as IAC, only 6 times bigger. But it could be said that it is making that kind of transformation, only more suited to its circumstances, by selling off its consumer brands to Verizon and retaining just the more valuable Asian investments in its current entity. The whole problem for Mayer was that its key products had started losing relevance long before she joined, and its brand/reputation was already a joke among the types of people it needed to appeal to - i.e. early adopter consumers and top engineering/design talent - if it was going to make a turnaround. Unlike Apple in 1996, it didn't still have loyal, true-believer devotees ready to enthusiastically embrace it once it started producing good products again. The people still using Yahoo products have mostly been people too indifferent about tech to switch their email platform or their browser's default page - i.e., people at the opposite end of the spectrum to Apple's true believers. So all she could do was carve up the assets and distribute them in a way that is most lucrative, which is precisely what she's done.

mgkimsal 9y ago
> all she could do was carve up the assets and distribute them in a way that is most lucrative That doesn't explain the dozens of acquisitions under her leadership.
- tomhoward 9y ago
  Sure it does: it may have been the only way to attract and retain enough top engineering and design talent to keep the consumer brands valuable enough to sell at a good price. Xobni, in particular, would fit that justification, given how key email has been to Yahoo's user retention. Tumblr on the other hand was more of a product/brand/audience acquisition than an acquihire, but it could well have made the suite of consumer brands more attractive to buyers.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    So she got paid preposterous amounts of money to ruin other businesses so she could use their workforce to fool investors in to propping up Yahoo when it was noticed Yahoo was no longer useful and was falling in it's goals? Capitalism: 'optimising' markets by giving all the value created to individuals who destroy the means of value creation. It's like some sort of economic terrorism, destroy any hope of economy and flee with the money.
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      Now that you've named it, this looks way too common.
skinnymuch 9y ago
> IAC's market cap is about 8B. Yahoo's cap is 6x that at 48B. I don't think this is a fair comparison based only on those two numbers. IAC has spun off a lot of companies. For internet related stuff, it has spun off: - Expedia in the mid 00s which at the time consisted of Expedia, Hotels, Hotwire, and a few other properties. Currently $23B market cap. - TripAdvisor was a part of the Expedia spin off and later got spun off itself. $5.5B market cap. - LendingTree was spun off - $2B market cap. - Interval Interactive spun off for a few billion market cap too. Not sure what's happening with them now. - Match Group was just spun off last year or so, $5B market cap. Maybe a few other small things too, not sure. All of the above companies are also profitable last I knew. I guess it also is a bit unfair to include all of those without the context that many weren't built from the ground up, but acquired initially. And you can't just combine the market caps of spun off companies into one number to compare to Yahoo. But still.

mgkimsal 9y ago

> all she could do was carve up the assets and distribute them in a way that is most lucrative That doesn't explain the dozens of acquisitions under her leadership.

tomhoward 9y ago
Sure it does: it may have been the only way to attract and retain enough top engineering and design talent to keep the consumer brands valuable enough to sell at a good price. Xobni, in particular, would fit that justification, given how key email has been to Yahoo's user retention. Tumblr on the other hand was more of a product/brand/audience acquisition than an acquihire, but it could well have made the suite of consumer brands more attractive to buyers.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  So she got paid preposterous amounts of money to ruin other businesses so she could use their workforce to fool investors in to propping up Yahoo when it was noticed Yahoo was no longer useful and was falling in it's goals? Capitalism: 'optimising' markets by giving all the value created to individuals who destroy the means of value creation. It's like some sort of economic terrorism, destroy any hope of economy and flee with the money.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    Now that you've named it, this looks way too common.

skinnymuch 9y ago

> IAC's market cap is about 8B. Yahoo's cap is 6x that at 48B. I don't think this is a fair comparison based only on those two numbers. IAC has spun off a lot of companies. For internet related stuff, it has spun off: - Expedia in the mid 00s which at the time consisted of Expedia, Hotels, Hotwire, and a few other properties. Currently $23B market cap. - TripAdvisor was a part of the Expedia spin off and later got spun off itself. $5.5B market cap. - LendingTree was spun off - $2B market cap. - Interval Interactive spun off for a few billion market cap too. Not sure what's happening with them now. - Match Group was just spun off last year or so, $5B market cap. Maybe a few other small things too, not sure. All of the above companies are also profitable last I knew. I guess it also is a bit unfair to include all of those without the context that many weren't built from the ground up, but acquired initially. And you can't just combine the market caps of spun off companies into one number to compare to Yahoo. But still.